My childhood was happy. I didn't realize it then, but now I know how important it is for a person. I had a nice mother and a nice father, who was an eye surgeon, and at an early age we moved from Brno to Ružomberok in central Slovakia, where my father worked in the local military hospital as chief surgeon.

I grew up in a community of sporty boys, albeit in a totalitarian industrial town, but close to Veľká Fatra and the Low Tatras, where my love for forests, mountains and sport was born. Apart from throwing my school bag into the kitchen after school in winter and running to the nearest slope with my skis, I was mainly into swimming. Indeed, like many of my friends, because in Ružomberok at that time there was almost nothing to do, but there was a pretty decent swimming pool. I hadn't even had time to ask the girls out for a date on the Promenade around the Váh River before I found myself back in Brno, where my father had taken a job as chief of staff at the Brno Military Hospital and I, a native Brnoer, had become a foreigner in my own country, struggling to get at least a decent grade in Czech at the gymnasium. The saddest thing for me at the age of fifteen was that I had left my friends and my favourite nature somewhere far away.

The choice of studying at the medical faculty was quite clear for me, my father and uncle were both doctors, my sister had already studied medicine in Brno - dentistry. After graduation, I joined the gynaecology and obstetrics clinic at the Obilní trh (Grain Market) and that was the year the first test-tube baby was born, conceived there. It was the first test-tube baby in the then communist bloc and it was a great success for Czech reproductive medicine and a promising beginning of the era of assisted reproduction. I devoted myself to work that I enjoyed, and through it I met my beloved wife, who came into my life in 1990, when she joined the same department as a young doctor. We went on to live a professional and eventually a private life together. Together we made all the plans, together we celebrated the successes and together we resisted the defeats. I think it's also because we both have a sporty soul. And it's true that what we've done, we've done through collaborative partnership and effort.

And I hope that the positive things we have put into building our clinic over twenty years, all our energy, will be felt by the patients themselves and will help them in their treatment.

Membership of professional societies and other bodies:

• Czechoslovak Gynaecological and Obstetric Society - CGPS
• Section of Assisted Reproduction - Member of the Revision Committee of the CSGPS SAR Committee
• Endoscopic Section of CGPS
• Endocrinology Section of CGPS
• Association of Private Gynaecologists of the Czech Republic - SSG ČR
• European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology - ESHRE
• Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis International Society - PGDIS